Emmanuel

Emmanuel

Las Cases, Emmanuel, comte de, 1766-1842, French historian. He accompanied Napoleon into exile to St. Helena, where the emperor dictated a part of his memoirs to him. His famous Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (tr. 8 vol. in 4, 1823) is a primary source, although not always an accurate one, for Napoleon's last years and his judgment of himself. The Mémorial became something of a bible to Napoleon-worshipers.

Grouchy, Emmanuel, marquis de, 1766-1847, French general in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. He was made a marshal after Napoleon's return from Elba during the Hundred Days. His questionable tactical decisions—his failure to prevent the Prussians from joining the English—are often thought to be largely responsible for Napoleon's defeat in the Waterloo campaign.

Frémiet, Emmanuel, 1824-1910, French sculptor; pupil and nephew of Rude. He was noted for his vigorous characterizations of animal and historical figures. His equestrian statue of Joan of Arc (Place des Pyramides, Paris) is a familiar landmark. Portrait statues include one of Colonel John Eager Howard (1903; Baltimore).

Rougé, Emmanuel, vicomte de, 1811-72, French Egyptologist. Rougé was curator of the Egyptian section of the Louvre and professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France. He and Lepsius produced a consistent system for the interpretation of discoveries, and he worked out fundamental principles for studying Egyptian texts. Rougé sought to prove that the Semitic alphabet had an Egyptian origin.

What Is the Third Estate? and the Declaration

In 1788, the King proposed convocation of the Estates-General of France after the interval of more than a century and a half, and the invitation of Jacques Necker to writers to state their views as to the organization of the Estates, enabled Sieyès to publish his celebrated January 1789 pamphlet, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? ("What Is the Third Estate?") He begins his answer:

"What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire? To be something."

Significance of "What Is the Third Estate?" to the French Revolution

The contributions of Sieyès’s pamphlet were indispensable to the revolutionary thought that projected France towards the French Revolution. In his pamphlet he outlined the desires and frustrations of the alienated class of people that made up the third estate. In many senses of the expression, he was the force that ripped the band-aid off the Ancien Régime in France, there by revealing the fraudulent nobility and more importantly the overburdened and despondent working class on which they preyed. The pamphlet was essentially the rallying cry that united a voiceless class, whose subjugation by an elitist and self-serving French political culture gave way to an unheard-of political force, nonetheless, a force with outlined and clearly stated grievances that for the first time were not to be overlooked in the convocation of the Estates General.

The pamphlet redefined the meaning of “public service,” against the conventional wisdom. The aristocracy defined themselves as an elite ruling class charged with the “arduous” task of maintaining the social order in France. On the contrary, Sieyès saw public service as a function performed not by the first or second but rather the third estate. Expression of radical thought at its best, the pamphlet placed sovereignty not in the hands of the uninformed, self-serving aristocrats, but instead defined the nation of France by its working class, whose daily trials and tribulations “are the activities which support society.” The French Revolution could not have been what it was without this patriotic and “radical” message, more importantly one so eagerly dispersed by the rising revolutionary politics within the third estate.

Furthermore, by defining the third estate as the primary mechanism of public service, he deliberately called into question the role of the aristocracy, alternatively portraying their role as foreign to the nation of France. The aristocratic arrogance and their ability to act absolutely and without query were precisely the grounds upon which Sieyès justified noble privilege as “treason to the commonwealth.” This being perhaps the most daunting of his rhetorical repertoire, Sieyès essentially used the nobility’s own arrogance and self-imposed privileges to establish the aristocracy as an alien body acting outside of the general will and the nation of France. Ironically, it was for these exact self-serving means that the Parlement of Paris pressured the king to call the Estates general. As a consequence, the resulting conflict between the orders inspired the proper political sphere from which the revolution grew.

Perhaps most significant was the influence of Sieyès’s pamphlet on the structural concerns that arose surrounding the convocation of the Estates general. Specifically, the third estate demanded their representation be made up of members from the third estate, that the number of deputies for their order be equal that of the two privileged orders combined, and most controversially “that the States General Vote, Not by Orders, but by Heads.” The pamphlet took these issues to the masses and their partial appeasement was met with revolutionary reaction. By addressing the issues of unjust representation directly, Sieyès inspired resentment and agitation that united the third estate against the feudalistic traditions of the Ancien Régime.

Assemblies, Convention, and Terror

Although not noted as a speaker (he spoke rarely and briefly), Sieyès had major influence, and he recommended the decision of the Estates to reunite its chamber as the National Assembly, although he opposed the abolition of tithes and the confiscation of Church lands. Elected to the special committee on the constitution, he opposed the right of "absolute veto" for the King of France, which Honoré Mirabeau unsuccessfully supported. He had considerable influence on the framing of the departmental system, but, after the spring of 1790, he was eclipsed by other politicians, and was elected only once to the post of fortnightly president of the Constituent Assembly.

Like all other members of the Constituent Assembly, he was excluded from the Legislative Assembly by the ordinance, initially proposed by Maximilien Robespierre, that decreed that none of its members should be eligible for the next legislature. He reappeared in the third national Assembly, known as the National Convention of the French Republic (September 1792 - September 1795). He voted for the death of Louis XVI, but not in the contemptuous terms sometimes ascribed to him. Menaced by the Reign of Terror, and offended by its character, Sieyès even abjured his faith at the time of the installation of the Cult of Reason, and afterwards he characterized his conduct during the period in the ironic phrase, J'ai vécu ("I survived").

Sieyès soon retired from the post of provisional Consul, which he had accepted after Brumaire, and became one of the first members of the Sénat conservateur (acting as its president in 1799); pasquinades at the time linked this concession to the large estate at Crosne that he received from Napoleon. After the plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise in late December 1800, Sieyès the senator defended the arbitrary and illegal proceedings whereby Bonaparte rid himself of the leading Jacobins.

Sieyès and the Social Sciences

1795 Sieyès became one of the first members of the class of moral and political sciences, the future Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France. When the French Academy was reorganized in 1803, he was elected in the second class replacing, in armchair 31, Jean Sylvain Bailly, who had been guillotined November 12, 1793 during the Reign of Terror. After the second Restoration, however, in 1815, he was expelled for his role in the execution of King Louis XVI, and was replaced by the Marquis of Lally-Tollendal, who was named to the Academy by a royal decree.

The recent publication of his unpublished works shows that he was the first to use the term 'sociologie' in 1780, although the term was some fifty years later again introduced as a neologism by Auguste Comte who helped to popularize the concept to refer to the science of society.